


Last Men Standing

by Clementive



Category: Naruto
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Background Team 7 Relationships, Background Uzumaki Naruto & Haruno Sakura, Gen, Implied/Referenced Childhood Trauma, Post-Naruto Time Skip | Naruto Shippuden, Sai (Naruto)-centric, Senpai-Kouhai Relationship, Snippets, Team Dynamics
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-05-30
Updated: 2020-05-30
Packaged: 2021-03-02 05:08:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,787
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23779651
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Clementive/pseuds/Clementive
Summary: Inside Root, it was always about the last man standing. Outside Root, it was about the last men standing. Sai-centric.
Relationships: Sai & Yamato | Tenzou
Comments: 4
Kudos: 45
Collections: Exchange no Jutsu 2020





	Last Men Standing

**Author's Note:**

  * For [hisen](https://archiveofourown.org/users/hisen/gifts).



> To Hisen: I'm actually really terrified (but also excited?) to give you this fic, because I don't usually do canon-verse. I looked up a bunch of stuff, and now I feel overwhelmed by feels for Sai. T_T Anyway! Hope you enjoy this! :DD This is has been a fun ride outside my comfort zone. hueheuheuhe
> 
> Just so you all know, I took liberties (especially with that last scene), mainly because I could and Sai deserved better (hence the canon-divergent tag).
> 
> Enjoy, you guys!

**I. Commands**

Yamato stopped walking. He waited. He stared at the trees, past the main gate where Naruto and Sakura were also waiting.

Sai erupted from the shadows in front of him.

"OI! Hurry up! We are bringing Sasuke back!" Naruto shouted, his hands cupping around his mouth.

"Naruto! Stop shouting!" Sakura snapped at him. "We still need to wait for Kakashi-sensei!"

Yamato and Sai ignored them. They stared at each other.

They recognized each other. Faceless. Emotionless. Nameless.

"All commands sound the same, don't they, senpai?" Sai said with a smile.

His skin stretched around his mouth, stiff leather. He tilted his head to the side to amplify his cheerfulness, but the contours of his closed eyes were creaseless.

Yamato's gaze shifted back to the top of the trees in the distance.

Sai's smile widened, still waiting, all angles crooked. If he could he would smile with lurking venom, with fusing hatred, with bared teeth soaked in ink and blood. Instead, he smiled placid, angular bones, tonelessly. 

_Faceless. Emotionless. Nameless._ Always.

Yamato started walking again, his hands deep in his pockets, skirting around him.

Sai followed Yamato with his eyes, not moving.

"You're watching me."

Sai tried to ease his smile.

' _Watch him,_ ' The hokage had ordered Yamato.

"You report back to Tsunade-sama."

Sai offered his hand, trying a lopsided smile now.

' _Report back to me._ '

"But you're more like me than a regular ANBU. You're Root."

Sai stuck out his tongue to reveal his seal, and his smile turned grotesque.

' _This is your name for this mission._ '

Yamato looked back at him, his pace slowing.

Sai still smiled, showing teeth now.

Yamato frowned. He was right. There were all things _they_ said, terrified, their control slipping, or with suspicion, overlooking a shogi board that reached far beyond. _They_ , in or outside of Root. _They_ , who ordered and commanded and reigned.

 _They_ , who made them.

And Yamato still loved it, still waited for them with bated breath, the guidelines, the orders, the reports.

_'He is right.'_

"You're wrong," Yamato replied coolly and the leaves, the branches shook helplessly, rustling softly. "I disobeyed once. That's why I'm here."

Sai stopped smiling, his black eyes shining only briefly.

"I'm not like you. Not anymore," Yamato added, then waved at Sakura and Naruto.

* * *

**II. Survival**

Sai leaned back against a tree in the shades of the training grounds. His scrolls opened on his laps, he watched Naruto and Sakura end their spar.

Sai lifted his lips with the back of his brush digging into his skin, trying to mimic the curve of their mouth as his teammates shouted playfully at one another. He tried the other side of his lips. No one smiled back at him.

Sai considered the craters made by Sakura's punches and the branches snapped by the steps of over a dozen of Naruto's clones.

They laughed now.

"See you tomorrow!" Naruto yelled.

He and Sakura waved back at Sai, reluctantly, and at Kakashi-sensei and Yamato-taichu more energetically.

With a smooth motion, Sai traced a curve on his scroll. It could be a mouth, he thought, but stopped. His wrist trembled. The ink dotted the paper. He thought of the sparring sessions he had survived. He thought of blood and his teammates' laughter sank in him like an echo. And he felt nothing.

The ink on his scroll was black, faceless, safe.

Yamato joined him, moments later, squinting at the retreating backs of Naruto and Sakura.

"You can go too, if you want," Yamato said pleasantly and inclined his head. "Kakashi-senpai is also gone."

"How many did you kill to become Root?" Sai asked him.

Sharing experiences and personal questions strengthened bonds, Sai had read.

Yamato turned toward him, his eyes widened. Sai smiled pleasantly recognizing the expression that terrified Naruto.

"Fear can't rule me," Sai said, his voice light and cheerful.

He wondered if this counted as an "inside joke" he had read about. He wondered if it would be "tactless" to ask his senpai.

"Then, why did you ask about my number of kills?"

Sai stopped smiling.

"We could train together," Yamato added.

Sai's eyes shone, hard and cold.

Yamato smiled sadly.

"Hm, not yet then."

He turned away from Sai, waving at him from over his shoulder.

"Later!"

With a flick of the wrist, Sai flattened the curve he had drawn earlier.

It couldn't be a mouth now.

* * *

**III. Memories**

Sai showed Yamato his drawings when they were resting on their way back to the village.

"Naruto saw them, so I thought you should too, senpai," Sai explained with a smile, but Yamato still frowned.

He didn't move.

Maybe he was only used to scrolls, Sai thought. He reached past him to turn the page of his book, but wood circled his wrist stopping him.

"I look at you sometimes, and I see myself," Yamato said softly.

"Thank you. I look up to you, senpai," Sai said with a renewed smile.

Elders often wanted validation, he had learned from a book Sakura had picked up for him at the library.

"When I quit, I thought I would have some of my memories back," Yamato added as quietly.

Sai smiled patiently. He didn't understand what he meant.

He didn't understand why Yamato was always serious with him, frowning and hesitant, while playful and reciting rules with Naruto and Sakura and Kakashi-sensei.

He didn't understand what _it_ meant. This difference.

With his index, Yamato tapped the faceless drawings one after the other.

"My memories are just like that. No face on anyone."

Yamato turned the page. The wood he had summoned retracted with a rough screeching and Sai's smile widened. He nodded slowly, then tilted his head to the side to give his expression countenance.

"Thank you for releasing me, senpai."

Sai had forgotten to clarify his gratitude earlier. Clarifications made a difference, he learned from the books.

"Now, I have nothing but faces," Yamato added and stared hard at him. "Friends. Colleagues. Family."

Sai stopped smiling, held back by ghosts. Held up by death. Held down by a man who knew a before and after Root and survived.

"I hope someday, you'll too," Yamato smiled, and he almost looked playful.

* * *

**IV. Identity**

They didn't bring Sasuke back.

Naruto and Sakura had hunched shoulders and shared deep sighs and quivering angry mouths. Shifting gazes. And they peeled and peeled off their sorrow, next to one another when everyone else was asleep. They held on each other refusing to give up.

Sai knew.

A comrade knew.

"I look like Sasuke-kun," Sai said to Sakura, and she punched the ground where he stood and threw an uprooted tree at him.

"I look like Sasuke-kun," Sai then said to Naruto, and he blanched and shouted at him, only held back by Kakashi.

' _You're not him! You could never be him!_ '

"I look like Sasuke-kun," Sai said to Yamato later with the same smile, because he felt he had slipped in someone else's role, borrowed his face, borrowed his friends. He thought Yamato would understand.

It was a recon mission.

It was like any mission.

_A comrade knew._

"I was once given a name…" Yamato said and sighed. "I was a brother."

Sai stopped smiling.

"You can't be Sasuke, you know that don't you?" he asked softly. "You're Sai."

His lips twitched.

"You're you."

' _Is that why no one smiles back at me?_ '

* * *

**V. Emotions**

Sai didn't understand.

' _Even I can tell that he really loves you!_ ' he had told Sakura.

Numb, Sai reached back for his tanto, leaning back against the side of the barrack, hidden from view. He breathed hard, clenching his hand around the handle of his weapon. Sweating, mind reeling, he couldn't let it go.

Sakura still cried, softly, then noisily.

Sai unsheathed his weapon, his eyes widened. It had hurt to be a brother. Now, it hurt to be a friend.

_He didn't understand._

The books never mentioned this.

"Let it go." Yamato's voice, his grip around his wrist was rough wood, edges and splinters.

Sai's automatically let go of his weapon, obeying his senpai's command. He smiled. Hollow, projecting an echo, he smiled.

Sakura still cried, alone.

"Let it go," Yamato repeated more firmly.

"I did," Sai smiled and wiggled his fingers.

His smile, his voice screeched. He tried again without grinding his teeth. He smiled wider, more cheerfully.

Yamato touched his shoulder.

"Not the weapon."

Sai's smile died, his mouth curled, stiffened. He wrinkled. He brightened. He tried again, but he only flickered back and forth, between quivering smile and hurt.

"Let it go."

"I don't-" Sai tried, his voice extinguished, rough.

Yamato's touch grew heavier, warmer, on his shoulder. Sai's eyes widened, staring at the hand on his shoulder.

"You were a good comrade for telling her."

Sai dropped his head and cried.

* * *

**VI. Friendships**

The war was over.

The fight was over.

Sai flinched.

"Wait!" Yamato stopped him, with his voice, with his wood.

Startled, Sai breathed heavily, shallow breaths that pounded in his skull. He had been ready to run to them.

He blinked, his stare returning to Yamato's face. It gleamed, pale, his dark eyes widened. Sakura knelt between them. Green chakra flashed between them. She cried and healed them.

Sai tried to shrug him off. It was supposed to be until there was one of them standing. Last man standing, that was how it works. You fought and killed, and you either stood or died.

They were both down, Naruto and Sasuke.

"You said… friends train," Sai panted still fighting Yamato's jutsu. "Friends don't… survive one another. You said, teammates don't fight like Root." He yelled the last part.

' _I believed you. I believed everything you said._ _You were supposed to know better than me._ '

"Sai... This isn't about you."

Sai struggled still, and the vines of wood dug deeper into his shoulder.

"He's back," Sai choked.

He could see it from here. Team 7. He had been part of Team Yamato. Team 7. Sasuke was back.

"Sai…"

"I'm not part of the team anymore."

"Your bonds are still there."

Sai stopped fighting, exhausted. Blankly, he stared at them. ' _Is this what I've been missing all along?'_

"It's going to be okay," Yamato said gently and smiled. "The war is over. The fight is over."

Sakura looked up at that moment. She smiled at him through her tears. Naruto moved his head, grinning, wolfish, upside-down.

"Oi, did you see that, Sai?! I kicked his ass!"

"Shut up, Naruto!" Sakura laughed through her tears, the green surrounding her hands intensifying.

Sai smiled, delayed, but easily.

Yamato squeezed his shoulder.

"We're going home," Yamato said and slowly released him.

Sai didn't stop smiling.

_Home. With the last men standing._

**Author's Note:**

> Kudos and comments equally appreciated! <3 Hope you're all safe!!


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